“If the United States negotiates with the Taliban, is it also talking to al Shabab?”

That question, asked by a faculty member after I gave a guest lecture at Somaliland’s University of Hargeisa, caught me by surprise. The Trump administration’s naive approach toward the Taliban aside, it was hard to imagine that the U.S. would do anything to empower a group like al Shabab. After all, al Shabab is an al Qaeda affiliate responsible for gunning down shoppers at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, singling out and gunning down Christian students at Kenya’s Garissa University, and targeting civilians and government officials alike with car bombs across Somalia. Indeed, the very reason why the U.S. spent tens of millions of dollars training Somali forces was to give them the ability to counter al Shabab.